Werewolf

Deeply flawed, but fundamentally decent, I approach life with an irreverent attitude toward certain modern social conventions, while harboring a profound nostalgia for bygone traditions of honor and decency. We each have our own code, and I succeed and fail by mine.

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Sunday, January 24, 2010

The Business School Experience: CPR or UPS?

This clip sums up the werewolf's business school experience. Well, not really, but close.

It was shortly after business school started, during one of those intense study sessions where nothing makes sense, while realizing the scope of the pending disaster that was Corporate Finance, that the werewolf's good friend, and partner-in-crime, the Saint Bernard, fired up this video. It immediately alleviated the asphyxiating pain of weighted average cost of capital calculations and gave the werewolf the gift of hope for the first time in a couple of weeks. Sayings like "knocking the truck window out," "givin' the man UPS," and "that's the way it was" became a coded vernacular for gauging how a particular class, day, event, was going at b-school.

The werewolf doesn't believe that having an emotional circle jerk with an over-educated therapist or binging on pre-packaged pharmaceutical wonder pills is a solution to any credible problem we face as humans. However, staring the cosmic joke that is life in the face, laughing, and moving on to the next challenge is. However, this video was a great secondary coping mechanism.

Someone very smart aptly described the b-school experience as drinking from fire-hose. Anonymity precludes the werewolf from giving credit where it is due, but rest assured, that quote is understated in its accuracy. It really only applies to the first year, and more accurately the first-half of the first year, but boy, does that quote hit the nail on the head.

The werewolf was always more of a "dreamer with an attitude" than the "master of the universe" that traditionally pursues an MBA. He certainly fits the bill as an atypical MBA searching for a career. B-school changed the werewolf in several ways, mostly for the better. In hindsight, it was a grueling, but worthwhile experience that he is thrilled he undertook. It has given him, coupled with exile a unique perspective on life. At the moment, the werewolf feels "like the man was dead" but is eagerly searching for "some UPS." Please bear with him as he tries to reflect, make sense of, and place value on his b-school education.